Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
The last couple of months haven’t been a good time for me. At the beginning of December I contracted a bout of the shingles, and it has taught me a lot. I used to think that childbirth had the top billing for pain, but at least that pain doesn’t last for two months!

As I felt sorry for myself, popping painkillers, there were times when I thought of tossing out today’s readings and going for a passage from Job. On first hearing the readings you have just heard seem a rather random collection! First, from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people of a new prophet that is to come and how they are to know him. The epistle goes on about eating food offered to idols – not really an everyday issue for us! And then the gospel story is about Jesus` exorcism of an unclean spirit. Where is the common thread?

And then I received an email from Revd John Shepherd, the Dean of St George`s Cathedral. He has a group that meets regularly in the Cathedral called Heretics Anonymous, and you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m on his email list for meeting notices. This particular email had a quote from Rev G A Studdert Kennedy, from his book `The Hardest Part`. I’d heard of Studdert Kennedy, but didn’t know much about him, so dipped into a book Jesus in History, Thought and Culture by James Leslie Houlden. He writes -

`The Great War of 1914-1918, which cost the lives of more than eight million people, most of them young men, was dominated theologically by the figure of Jesus on the Cross.

`At times (Jesus’) suffering was held up as a challenge to any understanding of an Almighty God. This division between the suffering Jesus and God was perhaps best described by the Army chaplain Revd G A Studdert Kennedy. (He was best known as `Woodbine Willie` after his custom of handing out packets of Woodbine cigarettes to the troops.)

He described pointing to a crucifix when a wounded officer asked him what God was like. Studdert Kennedy wrote that the officer replied: `I asked you not what Jesus was like, but what God is like, God Who willed His death in agony upon the Cross, and Who apparently wills the wholesale slaughter in this war. Jesus Christ I know and admire, but what is God almighty like?`
`Studdert Kennedy claimed that it was in response to the officer’s question that he wrote his book The Hardest Part. The answer that he, and some others, came to was that `God almighty` was not above or beyond the suffering of the trenches, but that in the crucifixion of Jesus we are shown that God is `in` human suffering.`

Perhaps it was the fact that Studdert Kennedy’s faith had stood the test of suffering that really resonated with me. Encouraging us to ask the awkward questions, he says:

`The faculty of faith is not meant to kill the faculty of criticism and the instinct of curiosity, but rather to keep them keen and alive, and prevent them dying of despair. Faith is the mark of those who seek and keep on seeking, who ask and keep on asking, who knock and keep on knocking, until the door is opened. The passive week-kneed taking of everything on trust which is often represented as faith is a travesty of faith.

True faith is the most active of all the virtues.
It means that we, having come into spiritual communion with that great personal spirit who lives and works behind the universe, can trust Him, and trusting Him can use all his powers of body, mind and spirit to co-operate with Him in the great purpose of perfection. It means that the person of faith will be the person of science in its deepest, truest sense, and will never cease from asking questions, never cease from seeking for the reason that lies behind all mysteries.`

And so, in my suffering, I followed his recommendation. I searched for the mysterious connection between the readings and came up with the phrase `Who says?`. Our earlier game of `Simon says` highlighted the dangers of accepting authority without question. If we are to be fully human and fully alive, we need to exercise our critical faculties of reason when living the life of faith.

Remember that old Sunday school chorus `Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so`. If our faith is to remain alive and relevant, that approach of blind acceptance at face value is out. We must question why the Bible says the things it does, who wrote the words and who were the intended readers.

Authority was clearly an important issue with Jesus. People asked by what authority he spoke and acted as he did. Mark, in the earliest of the gospels, starts his writing by asserting that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and explaining that John the Baptist’s ministry was a preparation for Jesus foretold by Isaiah. And then the very first recorded miracle, as we heard in today’s reading, tells of even the unclean spirits acknowledging Jesus as the Holy One of God. With such an introduction Mark’s message is clear – Jesus is a man who speaks and acts with the authority of God. A man you can have faith in.
Verse 22 is repeated exactly by Matthew at the end of the Sermon on the Mount where he says the crowd were astounded at Jesus teaching, for he taught as one having authority, not as their scribes. But where did he get that authority?
It is question that the chief priests and scribes put directly to Jesus but which he refused to answer. Shortly after Jesus cleansed the temple, Mark 11 from verse 27 reads `As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and elders came to him and said, `By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?` But Jesus sidestepped them with a trick question and did not give an answer. Why? Why the big secret?? I think it was because they wouldn’t have been able to understand the answer.

The reading from Deuteronomy shows that it was not an unusual issue. All prophets are to be assessed. And the last verse tells us how to tell whether or not their authority comes from God. Chapter 18 verse 22 says `If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.`

So the way we test whether someone speaks with the authority of God is to see if their words prove true. The Bible itself tells us that it is not enough to say `it’s in the bible so it must be true`. We need to weigh up the words of the Bible with what we know to be true. Sometimes it is obvious. Jesus often used hyperbole and exaggeration to make his points – `First take the plank out of your own eye` `harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle` and so on. He never intended these to be taken literally.
But Jesus, himself, was into reviewing the scriptures and finding the truth. In the Sermon on the Mount he reviews the commandments and restates them `you have heard it said – but I say to you – `. He reviews the commandments and prophetic instructions about murder, adultery, divorce, swearing falsely, vengeance and hatred of enemies. In each case he comes up with a stricter rule by applying the law of love.
It seems to me that we can do no better than to follow Jesus example. When reading the bible, especially the bits that don’t make sense, see how they measure up against the law of love. Is this passage consistent with a God of love and the living out of a love-filled life?

I must confess to not having read Studdert Kennedy’s book, The Hardest Part, but my roamings on the web did give me an insight into where the title came from. For me in my sufferings it struck a chord. Perhaps quoting one of the men in the trenches and expressed colloquially, he says `The Sorrows of God mun` be `ard to bear If `e really `as love in` is `eart, And the `ardest part i` the world to play mun surely be God`s part`. So the hardest part in the great drama of life, with all its joys and suffering is the part played by the God of love.

And if we are to follow the example and live a life of love it may require us to apply higher standards and make sacrifices. Paul makes it clear that since idols are nothing and mean nothing to us Christians, we are free to eat food that may have gone through the meaningless exercise of being offered to powerless idols or non-existent other gods. But then he applies the stricter law of love. If, by exercising our freedom we make it easier for someone else to do something which they believe is wrong (even though we know it isn’t) the loving thing to do is avoid it.

That doesn’t stop us from proclaiming our faith in a loving God and the freedom that that entails, but we need to think before we act. It is not a case of `Simon Says` or `the Bible says` or even `Jesus says`. Every time we must apply the law of love. Who sez? Love says!

Now for some meditation music while you think of how God has been present in your sufferings and how applying the law of love might change some of the things you did last week, and how you might do things differently this week.